8 July 2015
"The more we give way, the more they will take. The more we resist, the more we will win."
On budget day, Martin Deane, chair of Hull and East Riding Green Party, comments:
Yesterday, it was announced (by the CMA) that the Big 6 energy companies have collectively charged UK households £1.2 billion a year MORE than they would have in a competitive market.
That’s about £46 per household. For every single household. The companies involved are British Gas, E-On, Npower, EDF Energy, Scottish Power and SSE. THEY DON'T DESERVE OUR CASH. LET’S TAKE AWAY OUR BUSINESS! There are other alternatives – such as Good Energy or Ecotricity - and it’s easy to change.
Fuel poverty is not the result of people mismanaging their money, but an elite class, privatising national services, price gouging for profit and disallowing effective oversight. It's a racket. Yet the opposite is pretended.
It’s heartening to see today’s news of Labour joining the 5 year long Green Party campaign for fair energy. They're a bit late though. Will they leave it another 5 years to properly campaign against austerity? People die from these things...
How many? In February, the Telegraph estimated 40,000 deaths from fuel poverty would result from winter. The highest number for 15 years. These are outrageous figures! And now the ECO, the Energy Companies Obligation – which has been tackling fuel poverty – is expected to be cut further today, maybe even wiped out!
The over 1 million uses of Foodbanks of last year is CERTAIN to rise. This is 12% up on the previous year. It is up by a third on two years ago. There is no clearer indication of rising poverty than people having to access food out of necessity!
This is happening because the government is choosing measures which deliberately favour the rich at the expense of the poor. Such as the promised £12 billion welfare cuts that most Sun and Daily Mail readers apparently voted for!
Ian Duncan Smith said, “I am announcing that we will bring forward legislation to remove the measures and targets in the Child Poverty Act, as well as the other duties and provision.” What a fantastic government we have that eliminates child poverty all in one go! He goes on to say “How we measure things matters because it influences what governments focus on and what we target.” Indeed it does!
A country which forces children, the disabled and unemployed into poverty in order to cut taxes for millionaires, is morally bankrupt and has NO future.
THIS should be the subject of every news bulletin, of every tabloid and of every talkshow in Britain in 2015.
But we live in a time of worthy victims and unworthy victims. Unpeople – as the great John Pilger called the hidden victims of power. And that what is happening in Britain today – the poor are being recreated as an Unpeople, their plight doesn’t matter. Is there poverty in the country? Let’s do what we did just the other day – reclassify poverty so it hardly exists.
But we know what that really is! It’s a denial. It’s a cover-up. It’s a whitewash.
The country can and must be run for the people! The people as a whole - not an avaricious 1% and their political servants.
These are real choices – as real as giving every man, woman and child £20,000 – instead of over a trillion pounds for the banks! That’s the scale of the robbery. Even moreso when the central banks can create that money from thin air! And yet we’re all being made to pay.
We stand with the people of Greece today, saying NO to austerity.
NO to austerity for the people of Greece. NO to austerity for the people of Hull – likely to be one of the most hardest hit in the country by the coming changes.
NO to the loss of jobs! NO to the loss of services. And NO to councils that merely implement those changes.
The more we give way, the more they will take. The more we resist, the more we will win.
Martin Deane
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